Levis Stadium

Here is the Director’s Cut of my column that will run in Sunday morning’s editions, trimmed to a shorter length. This longer version contains an extra quote from Arizona coach Bruce Arians that I found relevant, plus some of the wilder (or maybe not) gossip about the 49er trinity’s dysfunction. The column:

Want my prediction?

In a dozen years or so, all three men will laugh about this.

Or perhaps they will cry.

Either way, with the benefit of hindsight, they will wonder and feel remorse over how they got so far off track.

In fact, that could even be the case right now.

I suspect that if you peeled enough layers away from their public countenances, you would find there are already some real feelings of regret inside Jim Harbaugh, Trent Baalke and Jed York.

The 49ers play their final game of the season Sunday at Levi’s Stadium. The foregone conclusion is that it will be Harbaugh’s last game as the team’s head coach, owing to disagreements and sandpaper-grating personality differences with owner York and general manager Baalke.

And, yes, it all could have been prevented.

Bruce Arians, who will coach the Arizona Cardinals against the 49ers at Levi’s Stadium, was on a telephone conference call with Bay Area writers last week and also seemed mystified by the 49ers’ intramural meltdown.
“Very shocking to me, yes,” Arians said. “Jimmy’s done an unbelievable job. One bad season shouldn’t deter from what they’ve built there.”

No. It shouldn’t. But in mulling over the whole 49er mess of the past six months involving the Harbaugh-Baalke-York disconnect, I was struck with this realization: All three men are basically still serving their first term of NFL office. All are holding their current position for the first time in pro football.

This isn’t insignificant.

York has been the 49ers’ chief executive officer for five years. He’d apprenticed in the family football business but had never previously been in complete charge as controlling owner.

Baalke has been the team’s GM for four years. He’d never before held such a position.

Harbaugh has been the 49ers’ head coach for four years. He’d done that job at the college level but not in the NFL.
Three men. All undeniably smart. All ambitious. All successful in earlier endeavors. And all without as much experience or perspective as many others in America’s most popular and visible sports league.

Perhaps four or five years in a position seems like a long time to you. But learning the ropes of any high-level NFL job is not for the faint of heart. With the big money involved, the pressure to build (and fill) stadiums and find corporate sponsors, the crazy attention paid to every single utterance and burp and transaction and third-quarter choice to not punt on fourth down . . . trust me, it can greatly throw off a person’s world view and perspective. From inside the NFL bubble, having the patience to take a deep breath and see a bigger picture is a rare quality and possibly impossible without years and years of experience.

The Harbaugh-Baalke-York situation was likely compounded by the fact that they were all immensely triumphant, directly out of the starting gate. York became team president in 2009 and CEO the following year. Harbaugh and Baalke were appointed to their positions in early 2011. Twelve months later, the 49ers were playing in the NFC title game. The following season, they were in the Super Bowl. Each of the three men, with reason, surely believed they had all the right answers in terms of creating championship fabric.

That fabric, though, was always a weave of egos and hard-work intensity. And when slight rips in the fabric developed, they turned into large gashes way too quickly. When York decided to back up Baalke more often in disagreements with Harbaugh, the ultimate outcome was inevitable.

Here is the unedited “Director’s Cut” version of my column that will appear in Wednesday morning’s Mercury News and other Bay Area News Group newspapers . . .

Thoughts while stuck in Levi’s Stadium parking lot — where you can exit any time you like, but you can never leave . . .

 Calm down. The A’s and Giants will both make the playoffs. Pitching will do it.

 But here is your helpful calendar tip: The American League Wild Card Game is scheduled for Sept. 30. The National League Wild Card Game is October 1. Could easily be a Bay Area back-to-back. Be prepared to call in sick, depending on start times.

 Question I’m pondering, though: Let’s assume the Giants and A’s each get past the wild card game. Which has the best chance to do further damage? If only three starters are needed, has to be the A’s. Keep in mind that with four days between the wild card game and Game 3 of the AL division series, Jon Lester could make both those starts.

 On the other hand: Buster Posey’s face. It has that 2012 look again.

 I truly believed that the Raiders would be a better football team in 2014 because when I looked at their roster compared to recent seasons, I thought it finally looked like a NFL roster. I was right. It just turned out to be the Jacksonville Jaguars roster.

 Head coach Dennis Allen is not responsible for all of the Raiders’ problems. But he is responsible for making sure the team looks prepared to compete. Sunday against Houston, the Raiders looked more ready to tailgate.

 I always believe in following the revenue when it comes to predicting a coach’s future, especially when a team does not sell out on a regular basis. Next time the Raiders must fill seats at O.co Coliseum is Oct. 12, because of the road game at New England, the overseas London trip and a weekend off. If the Raiders don’t give their fans incentive to buy seats in those two televised games, you can also make it a “bye” week for Allen.

 The 49ers will survive their collapse against Chicago just fine, assuming quarterback Colin Kaepernick has no three-pick hangover. But the defense had better figure out a pass rush by Sept. 28 when Philadelphia visits. That’s a very good team.

 Reader Michael Campbell suggests Kaepernick’s problem Sunday was that when he stared down at his arm for the play calls, he somehow mistakenly read one of his tattoos instead.Continue Reading →

Late Tuesday afternoon, Baltimore Ravens owner Stephen Bisciotti posted a letter to fans on the NFL team’s website regarding the Ray Rice domestic violence fiasco with his wife, Janay. The letter is instructive and a clear admission of guilt on the Ravens’ part, as well as an apology that sounds sincere. I’ve pasted the letter at the bottom of this blog posting.

Why does this letter matter to those of us in the Bay Area? We all know why it matters. The last thing that 49ers owner Jed York wants is to find himself in position to write a letter like this, whenever the Ray McDonald case reaches a conclusion. And indeed, no such letter may ever be necessary. York was vocal and consistent Tuesday morning in his KNBR radio interview, following the company talking points that the 49ers must let due process conclude before taking any action. But reading between the lines, it’s obvious that the 49ers have conducted some form of their own investigation and at the very least haven’t uncovered enough negative “facts” to take a sterner stance when it comes to McDonald’s domestic violence arrest.

However, there are some passages in the Bisciotti letter that York may find especially pertinent, such as this one:

“In March, the prosecutor dropped the case against Janay, but elevated the charge against Ray from simple assault to aggravated assault. At this point, we decided to defer action until completion of the court proceedings. We stopped seeking to view or obtain a copy of the video. We halted our fact-finding. That was a mistake on our part.

And another excerpt of Bisciotti’s letter: “We should have pursued our own investigation more vigorously. We didn’t and we were wrong.”

My salient conclusion: If the 49ers’ “investigation” of the McDonald incident has been as thorough as the Ravens’ investigation of the Rice incident . . . well, that definitely isn’t thorough enough. It strikes me that no one has yet asked the question — and I blame myself for this as much as anyone else — of the extent to which the 49ers are cooperating with the San Jose Police investigation.

We know that many other players were at the house party where the McDonald episode occurred. Have those players been interviewed by the police? And if so, have 49ers lawyers been present when those interviews took place?

Did the 49ers’ own investigation simply consist of asking McDonald and a few other players what happened? Or did the team and NFL investigators interview neighbors who might have witnessed the alleged violence but did not do so with a teammate’s eye? We have to assume the police did so or are doing so.

Did the 49ers and NFL investigators ask if anyone on the team has cell phone video of what happened up on Bentley Ridge Drive? We have to assume the police are doing so after tracking down everyone who was at the party.

In other words, how deep did the 49ers’ and NFL investigation really go? Because that issue certainly seemed to be problem with the Rice case.

All the details should be contained in the final police report, if it is ever made public and charges are filed. Meanwhile, it’s kind of eerie to read Bisciotti’s written regret about the Ravens deciding to “defer action until completion of the court proceedings.” Does that not sound similar to the 49ers’ deciding to wait for “due process” before they take any action?

In the end, York and the 49ers may come out looking a lot better than the Ravens. And it’s not the 49ers’ fault that the Rice stuff blew up this week as people are still trying to sort out the McDonald mess. But like many others, I do believe the 49ers made the wrong move in deciding not to suspend McDonald until we get all the facts from the police. This is supposed to be one of the most joyous weeks in 49ers franchise history, with the regular season debut of Levi’s Stadium and a showcase game against the Chicago Bears on NBC Sunday Night Football. I’d rather be writing about that. Instead, because the 49ers didn’t set aside the McDonald case and make him far less of an issue as the season starts, I have been reading and re-reading Bisciotti’s letter . . . and hoping that Jed York does not have to use it as a template at some point.

UPDATE AT 4:30 P.M.: My information is that the 49ers still have not diagnosed the issue with the turf tangle. But they are pretty well convinced the type of grass they chose — Bermuda Bandera — is not the problem. Bermuda Bandera has held up okay at other athletic facilities, including O.co Coliseum late last NFL season when the Raiders used it in their painted end zones after the A’s season was complete.

So what the heck was/is the problem? I’ve spoken to several knowledgeable people about this today. Local golf course greenskeepers this summer have noticed that with the drought, the underground water has receeded and brought more sodium into the subsoil, making it more difficult to transplant sod and have it “take” by sinking deep roots.

Or there is this, from the Levi’s Stadium web site: The stadium will use reclaimed water for both potable and non-potable uses such as the playing field irrigation water

Maybe the Bermuda Bandera, which was touted as drought friendly because it needs 50% less water than normal turf, doesn’t like reclaimed water? Or maybe it needs just 25% less water instead?

And of course, it could always be human error in the way the field was installed in the first place.

Either way, I know the 49ers front office is extremely non-happy about the situation. I’d be furious, too, after spending $1.3 billion on a new home. But for now, the plan is to get through Sunday’s nationally-televised exhibition game with San Diego and then await a full report on what went wrong.

Meanwhile, that high school doubleheader on Aug. 29 still must be in limbo. If the field looks choppy and ugly after Sunday’s game, does it seem like a good idea to play two more football games on field just five days later?

I do know three things for sure:

1. Long before it was a stadium or a Great America parking lot, the area on which the field sits was a fruit orchard. So we know that stuff can grow there.

2. The NFL has turf experts who can be consulted and who have seen just about every turf/sod problem in the world–and fixed it.

3. The field will eventually be right. It will definitely be fixed by February of 2016, when the Super Bowl is played at Levi’s Stadium.

(And one final P.S.: Is it just me, or does “Bermuda Bandera” sound like the title of a bad Adam Sandler movie?)

Well, here’s one more thing the 49ers did not need in the Levi’s Stadium grand opening saga: An herbaceous vegetation crisis.

As was proved by television station helicopter shots this morning, the team is ripping up the middle of the field, from goal line to goal line and hash mark to hash mark, to take out the current troublesome turf and replace it with new stuff for Sunday’s exhibition game against San Diego.

So that should be interesting.

I’ve also confirmed that there have been internal discussions at 49er headquarters about whether to move the scheduled Aug. 29 high school football doubleheader and the Sept. 6 international soccer friendly out of the stadium, in order to give the new turf a chance to thrive before the Sept. 14 regular season 49ers opener against the Chicago Bears.

So far, no decision has been made on the high school games but the soccer game — between Mexico’s and Chile’s national teams — is definitely a go at this point. The prep doubleheader, matching Manteca vs. Wilcox and Sacramento Jesuit vs. Concord De La Salle, could possibly be switched to another site such as Spartan Stadium or could simply revert to home fields at Wilcox and De La Salle. But again, that’s premature. If the turf holds up well on Sunday, the high school games will go on at Levi’s as planned.

What happened here? I’m no agronomist and don’t pretend to know. All new stadiums have glitches and cellophane-unwrapping issues (plus, I know there are still around 40 people doing finish work at Levi’s because it’s not 100% done). Also, replacing turf at the NFL level is not horribly unusual. The 49ers did it often at Candlestick, given the goofy field/weather conditions there.

But it’s still very surprising and embarrassing that the team finds itself in such a pickle. Levi’s Stadium, as we know, has been touted as the greenest green stadium in green sports history of greenery. And part of that was the choice to make Bermuda Bandera grass the playing surface. It’s drought friendly and supposedly uses 50% less water than regular football-type turf.

The grass was grown at a farm in Merced County near Modesto and transplanted to Levi’s in April. There had been a few trouble signs with divots coming up during public 49ers workouts and a gala concert and last Sunday’s exhibition game. But when Jim Harbaugh pulled the team off the field at another public practice on Wednesday because of the working conditions, that cemented the deal. And the new turf was brought to town.

My question would be: Did anybody go out to actually test the Bermuda Bandera in Modesto to see if it could handle the physics of 300 pound people and very fast-cutting 220-pound running backs and wide receivers? Isn’t it possible that those sorts of activities require grass that needs 50% more water, not 50% less?

Questions I hope to answer as soon as I get an agronomist on the phone. I have a nephew who’s in that business. Maybe I’ll give him a buzz.

No big hockey shock, right? Wednesday’s announcement of the Sharks’ outdoor game for Feb. 21 was long expected. And in recent weeks, it had become clear that Levi’s Stadium was probably the preferred venue. The Shark front office and National Hockey League merely wanted to make sure they were correct in the assumption that the game would sell out.

I know. We’re talking 68,500 seats here, at prices ranging from $65 to $350. Sounds like a lot of seats. Sounds like a lot of money. But the league, which bears the financial risk for the game, is confident that the stadium will be full for the Sharks vs. Kings when the puck drops.

They’re probably right. But we’ll find out soon enough. There will be exclusive pre-sales for Sharks’ season ticket holders, Kings’ season ticket holders and 49ers season ticket holders during the next week. At least for Sharks’ fans, every season ticket holder can purchase up to 11 seats for the game. Not sure about the Kings and 49ers season ticket holders. But if the pre-sale doesn’t manage to sell out three-quarters of the stadium–roughly 50,000 seats–before tickets go on sale to the regular public, that would be a bad indication.

John Tortora, the Sharks’ chief operating officer, said in a Wednesday conference call that he expected to see 68,500 customers at Levi’s. Seats in the lower stadium bowl will all cost $100 or more, per the seating chart at this link: http://sharks.nhl.com/club/page.htm?id=99505&navid=RED .

Tortora also called the outdoor game “one of the biggest sporting events ever” in the Bay Area. Some might dispute that, given hockey’s popularity compared to the NFL, MLB and NBA. But in terms of a firmly scheduled event — as opposed to NBA, NHL and MLB playoff or World Series games that are subject to the home teams winning enough games to qualify — you could make a case that the hockey game might rank behind only Super Bowl XIX at Stanford and the upcoming Super Bowl 50 at Levi’s Stadium in February of 2016. What else would be bigger? The San Jose Grand Prix auto race that drew 150,000 to downtown’s streets? The Big Game in football with Stanford and Cal? The U.S. Open Golf Tournaments at Olympic Club? All those would have valid arguments, too. You might think of one or two more that I’ve missed.

The hockey hype machine will really crank up next month with a press event at Levi’s that will likely feature NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and explain all of the ancilliary functions held in conjunction with the game. That will likely include a public skating session, perhaps a college club hockey game involving local teams and maybe some sort of hockey expo at either the San Jose or Santa Clara convention centers. Last year when the Kings and Ducks played at Dodger Stadium, there was also a KISS pregame concert that yielded this awesome photo of Bettman and Gene Simmons:

I don’t know about you, but I’m personally hoping that major hockey fan and local resident Neil Young (whose late father was a renowned and revered NHL print journalist in Canada) will get involved in the Levi’s Stadium game and find a way to put Bettman on stage in a flannel shirt with a cowbell.

You can read my blog posting from a few weeks ago that outlined the eight issues that were in play deciding where the game would be played, plus revealed the financial structure of the game and rain-date possibilities, plus predicted that Santa Clara would end up being the probable location. Here’s the link: http://blogs.mercurynews.com/purdy/2014/06/24/hasnt-nhl-anno…ht-issues-hand/ .

The choice of Levi’s Stadium, it seems, was no slam dunk but pretty close to it. Here’s why: Continue Reading →

The unedited “Director’s Cut” of my column that will appear in Wednesday morning’s newspaper editions:

Until further notice, I declare Santa Clara mayor Jamie Matthews to be the most prescient man in the universe.

All right, maybe not in the universe. But definitely in the 408 area code.

Last month when Levi’s Stadium was being opened and dedicated in Matthews’ city, speechmakers clogged the air with optimism. But I knew there had to be angst behind the scenes. So I asked Matthews to name one thing that was keeping him up at night with concern.

“Traffic and parking,” he answered honestly. “The first time around, there are always going to be some hiccups. It’s inevitable.”

Give that man a crystal ball with a nicked fender.
Last Saturday when Levi’s staged a “soft opening” with an Earthquakes soccer game, the hiccups were more like a clogged trachea. Some fans reported having a flawless experience getting into and out of the stadium. But far too many were delayed in automobile quicksand or by the inexcusably unprepared Valley Transit Authority (VTA) train operation.

So, naturally, I checked in again with Matthews on Tuesday for his assessment. Santa Clara is not in charge of the game-day traffic plan. The 49ers are the ultimate overseers. But politicians are always the ones who get the phone calls. Plus, the city does have planning input and provides law enforcement support.

“We’ve learned a lot,” Matthews told me. “That’s what was supposed to happen with this game. That’s the reason we had it. We were supposed to learn. We’re committed to learn. We’re excited about making the changes and refinements that will improve things.”

Unfortunately, that does not help the 48,765 people—about two-thirds the size of a 49ers crowd–who attended Saturday’s soccer match. They basically paid for the privilege of being crash test dummies. This was hardly fair, even if they were crash-test dummies stuck in zero-miles-per-hour jams and long security lines to enter the stadium.

The scene was frustrating for all involved. At one point, Santa Clara police chief Michael Sellers left his command post to personally direct cars on Tasman Drive outside the stadium. (See picture above.) In the game’s aftermath, 49ers executive Jim Mercurio and VTA spokesperson Colleen Valles have promised that the situation will improve significantly for the first NFL preseason game at Levi’s on August 17.

They had better be right. The VTA, especially, has its reputation on the line. You simply can’t air radio advertisements that urge people to take your trains to the stadium and then be astonished when 8,000-plus people show up to do so. That’s what seemed to occur Saturday. Train cars were overstuffed. Many riders waited up to an hour for their homeward trip. Supposedly, the VTA’s new “pocket tracks” on site will be finished by August 17, thus allowing multiple trains to be parked and ready for the postgame rush. We’ll see.

Also, malfunctioning trains weren’t the only gaffe. For a while during the pregame rush, word was sent to traffic personnel that the large civic parking garage on Tasman Dr. was full – but it actually wasn’t. People with prepaid garage passes were therefore mistakenly (and angrily) turned away until the mixup was rectified.

Was it strange to you? It was strange to me. The Sharks’ schedule was released the other day without the National Hockey League designating if or where the team might be playing host to one of the league’s signature outdoor games.

Word has been out for a while that the Sharks were likely to play a home game al fresco this season. John Tortora, the team’s chief operating officer, began investigating the possibilities when he assumed that job a year ago. When the Kings-Ducks game at Dodger Stadium was such a success in Los Angeles last season, Tortora began pushing the league to consider the Bay Area with more enthusiasm. The NHL outdoor games in their current incarnation have been a huge success since the first “Winter Classic” in 2008 at the Buffalo Bills’ stadium. Since then, 11 more outdoor games have been played in such iconic structures as Fenway Park, Wrigley Field and the University of Michigan Stadium.

And from what I hear, it’s supposed to happen here next winter . . . .somewhere. There are just a lot of details to work out. So what’s the holdup? Here are the issues at hand, as gleaned after discussions from various sources, plus my non-solicited opinion on each:

ISSUE ONE: Can the Bay Area handle such an event, which could bring thousands of out-of-town fans to the game as well as local ticket-holders?

OPINION: Of course it could. The Bay Area has staged several baseball All-Star games, a Super Bowl, multiple World Series and a NHL All-Star game. The infrastructure is in place and so are the hotel rooms.

ISSUE TWO: Does the game make financial sense for the Sharks and the NHL?

OPINION: For the Sharks, absolutely. For the league, you’d think so. The contractural structure of the outdoor games — for both the Winter Classics on New Year’s Day or the Stadium Series contests last year in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York — is unique. The NHL basically buys the host team out of a home game, paying it the equivalent of a sold-out gate. Then the league takes over the entire show, paying the expenses to stage the game but also keeping the entire proceeds from tickets and telecasts and merchandising, etc. A portion of that revenue is then divided among all NHL teams. It means that before committing to an outdoors game in Northern California, the projected P+L sheet will pencil out to the positive. Because if the game is a flop, the NHL takes the red-ink bath, not the Sharks. And it’s quite an involved process to build out one of these games, as exemplified in this video of the Wrigley Field ice rink conversion .